It is known to produce synthetic polymeric sheet materials simulating the appearance of natural leather. Such materials find numerous end uses as a substitute for natural leather, as in manufacture of footwear, handbags, wallets, wearing apparel, accessories, uphoistery materials and the like. Such synthetic leather materials often are formed by coating or laminating a reinforcing substrate, such as woven, nonwoven, or knit textile fabric, with synthetic resinous polymers, and the patented art is replete with disclosures of various combinations of such polymeric conponents to provide particular characteristics for the desired end use of the products.
Within the patented prior art, U.S. Pat. No. 4,017,656 discloses a particular imitation leather material which consists of a plurality of polymeric layers secured to a woven fabric base. One face of the fabric contains two layers of a polymeric foam with a thin urethane outer skin which is embossed to simulate an imitation leather-like surface. The other face of the woven fabric is napped and saturated with a nitrile elastomeric material which is cross-linked by heating. Thereafter, the napped surface is abraded to produce a leather, flesh-like appearance, with the ends of the napped fibers exposed on the impregnated surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,941,633 discloses a plastic laminate article having a polyurethane film substrate, a layer of polyurethane foam bonded thereto, and a woven fabric superstrate bonded in the foam layer, either by use of an adhesive or by partial curing of the foam layer with pressure application of the fabric thereto.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,719,549 discloses a plastic sheeting having an abraded and embossed surface of foamed plastic on a support backing, which may be composed of glass fibers. The patent discloses that the embossed appearance in the foamed layer may be achieved by use of an intermediate embossed plastic layer which strikes through the foamed abraded surface layer, or the foamed surface layer may itself be embossed and abraded to provide the desired surface appearance.